Your TV Set-Top Box Never Sleeps, and It Costs You

Not many of us watch television 24 hours a day – but we might as well.

Even when people’s TVs are turned off, the set-top boxes from our cable company, telephone company or satellite provider keep on running, gobbling energy and jacking up our electric bills. The worst offenders are digital video recorders (DVRs), which are essentially always on.

Today the industry announced a voluntary program to try to rein in those power-hungry devices.

“It’s really an unprecedented agreement,” said Doug Johnson, Vice President of Technology for the Consumer Electronics Association.